1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a rubber composition for tire tread having improved dispersibility, processability, mechanical characteristics, rolling resistance characteristics and abrasion resistance, and a tire produced using the rubber composition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the recent demand for a decrease in the automobile fuel consumption, the development of low fuel consumption tires through a decrease in the tire rolling resistance is a major subject of interest, and in order to realize this, technologies for using silica in the tire tread rubber have been continuously developed.
Unlike the non-polar carbon black that has been widely used as a filler for tire tread rubber, silica has a large number of silanol groups (—SiOH) at the surface, and therefore, silica exhibits hydrophilicity. Also, due to the characteristic of strong polarity, silica does not have good miscibility with non-polar rubber. Thus, this problem has been solved by silane coupling agents.
In general, a silane coupling agent plays the role of reacting with a silanol group of silica and changes the polar nature, which is a surface chemical characteristic of silica, to a non-polar nature, thereby facilitating the mixing of silica with rubber. However, since the silane coupling agents that have been conventionally used contain sulfide groups, there is a problem that scorching frequently occurs at a temperature of 150° C. or higher, and processability is deteriorated (Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2011-0071607 (filed Jun. 29, 2011) and Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2011-0073061 (filed Jun. 29, 2011)).
The present invention was made in order to solve the problems described above, an object of the present invention is to provide a rubber composition for tire tread having improved dispersibility, processability, mechanical characteristics, rolling resistance characteristics and abrasion resistance.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a tire tread having improved low fuel consumption performance, which is produced using the rubber composition for tire tread described above.